Americans Among Hostages Held by Terrorists in Algeria

By Caroline Alexander and Mariam Fam -
Jan 17, 2013

An al-Qaeda-linked group demanding
that France end its offensive against militants in neighboring
Mali vowed to kill foreign workers held captive in the southern
Algerian desert unless troops surrounding them pulled back.

The group said it was holding 41 foreigners abducted from a
natural gas complex operated by BP Plc (BP/), Statoil ASA (STL) of Norway
and Algeria’s Sonatrach, while Algerian Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia said they numbered “a little more than 20,”
according to the state-run Algerian Press Service.

American, Norwegian, British and Malaysian workers are
among the hostages, according to the oil companies, family
members and governments, including 12 Statoil employees and an
Irish national. A British citizen died in the attack, APS said.

“One day after the attack in In Amenas, we still face an
uncertain and very serious situation,” Helge Lund, chief
executive officer of Statoil, said today during a televised
press conference from Stavanger. There has been no significant
new information overnight, he said.

The militant group, calling itself the “Signatories by
Blood,” is demanding France end its military attacks in Mali,
according to Mauritania’s private ANI news agency. French ground
troops advanced in Mali yesterday to engage Islamist fighters
and ethnic Touareg separatists that have taken control of the
northern half of the nation and were moving toward the capital,
Bamako. France has committed 1,700 troops to the mission,
including 800 already deployed in the country.

Al-Qaeda Resurgence

The group said it would kill the hostages if the Algerian
army tries to liberate them by force, ANI today cited an
unidentified spokesman as saying.

“This is exactly what Algeria was fearing,” James D. Le
Sueur, a history professor specializing in Algeria at the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln, said in a phone interview.
“They were afraid that any incursion in Mali would cause a
resurgence of al-Qaeda.”

“If France doesn’t halt its intervention, we are going to
execute these hostages,” Omar Hamaha, spokesman of the Malian
group Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, said today of
the attack on the gas complex, speaking by phone from an
undisclosed location.

Al Jazeera television reported yesterday that the group had
freed its Algerian captives. The broadcaster today said that it
still held 150 Algerian workers, citing an unidentified source
close to the attackers.

Bus Attack

Thirty Algerian workers escaped today, according to APS.

The gunmen arrived yesterday in three vehicles at a
workers’ compound near In Amenas, about 1,300 kilometers (800
miles) southeast of Algiers, and attacked a bus carrying foreign
employees, the Interior Ministry said.

The American wife of a foreign worker on the bus said in a
phone interview from Texas that 11 people, including Americans,
were on the vehicle as it was attacked in the dark for three
hours. One of them was killed and survivors including her
husband were taken to a safe place while they wait to be flown
out, said the woman, who asked not to be identified by name.

The workers were on their way to a police station to get
fingerprints taken for work and residency visas, she said. BP
and Statoil both said they would set up helplines for relatives.

Foreigners Held

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland didn’t specify
how many Americans were being held, citing security
considerations. The ANI news agency cited the group as saying it
is holding 41 foreign hostages, including seven U.S. citizens.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke yesterday with
Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal about the situation,
Nuland said in Washington.

Several Britons are caught up in the incident, Prime
Minister David Cameron’s spokesman, Jean-Christophe Gray, told
reporters. The Irish government said one of its citizens was
being held.

Statoil’s CEO Lund confirmed in the news conference that 12
Statoil employees are being held hostage and five have been
brought to safety. Nine of the employees are Norwegian, he said.

Some of the people abducted were employed by JGC Corp. (1963), the
principal contractor of the field along with Kellogg, Brown &
Root LLC. JGC is investigating the situation, Japanese
broadcaster NHK reported.

Mali Border

Algeria’s frontier with Mali was closed Jan. 14, three days
after the first French air attacks against rebels and Algeria
allowed French military flights through its airspace.

Algeria “has taken all the steps and measures necessary to
cope with the impact of foreign intervention in Mali,” Kablia
said.

The attackers were operating under the orders of Mokhtar
Belmokhtar, who previously led al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,
Kablia said. AQIM is among the groups targeted by the French
armed forces in Mali and is holding four Frenchmen kidnapped in
2010 from a mine operated by nuclear company Areva SA (AREVA) in
neighboring Niger.

Algeria holds the second-largest natural gas reserves in
Africa after Nigeria, according to an annual statistical review
by BP.

“One of the things that Algeria did was fortify all those
oil and gas producing areas, and they were very successful, they
were heavily guarded installations,” Le Sueur said. “That they
finally got to them indicates a very substantial threat to the
region or at least to Algeria.”